Paradise Salvage

by John Fusco.

( Scribner, £10.00)

Twelve-year-old Nunzio's innocence is lost forever when he opens the boot of a wrecked Pontiac Bonneville in his father's junkyard and finds a corpse.

But who will believe the tale of the horror that he found there when all evidence is lost to the crusher known as Paradise Salvage?

In a family of Italian-American eccentrics, only Danny Boy is persuaded by his younger brother's unlikely claim.

But things change when they call on the help of their father's renegade cousin, Angelo, a quadriplegic ex-cop with a murky history of his own.

Together they follow a dangerous trail through the seedy side of small-town America, trying to solve the mystery behind the corpse.

Yet, ultimately, their journey is also one of personal discovery in this witty and humane portrayal of a world gone slightly bizarre.

For his debut novel, Fusco has drawn on his own memories of growing up in an Italian-American community.

His experiences combine to flavour a tale that is skilfully written and full of suspense, all the while pivoting on the fulcrum of the Paradiso family, whose generations struggle to reconcile the past with the present.